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A few hundred years ago, the greatest minds in the world didn't have a formal education going farther than what we would consider eighth grade. Even sixty years ago when NASA was spearheading man's ascent into space, many technicians and scientists didn't have a degree higher than a Bachelor of Science.
Today it's not uncommon to see researchers and academics in post-secondary education for ten years or more. Even after receiving doctoral degrees, many continue on to postdoctoral research, further delaying entry into the professional world. As time has gone on, and more results have been added to the collective knowledge of humanity, aspiring academics seemingly have to cover more and more known information before they reach new territory.
I wonder id such a track is sustainable. Will humanity reach a point one day where, barring intellectual prodigies, the average human can't learn enough about the field in the span of his or her lifetime? Will we reach a point where we have to learn too much to even be able to reach the frontier of a given field? If we do, how do we handle it?
If such a possibility exists, I think we're pretty far from it. But just as increased access to education is inflating job qualifications in the US, it's possible that increased availability of research results will inflate the educational qualifications needed to be able to discover new results.
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[Last updated: 2021-10-28]